PhD defence: Collaborative Planning in China: Institutional Design and Authoritarian Deliberation in Urban Regeneration and Water Management

Rapid economic growth and urbanization have led to severe environmental pollution and escalating social conflicts, challenging China’s traditional top-down governance. To manage these complexities, local governments have increasingly adopted collaborative approaches. Unlike Western models, these practices are characterized with authoritarian deliberation, where collaborative processes happen within pre-defined boundaries and focus on a restricted set of topics. This thesis examines collaborative approaches in China in two distinct governance domains to understand their institutional designs, collaborative processes, and actual effectiveness within an authoritarian context. In urban regeneration, this research explores the co-creation approach in Guangzhou to understand how localized, multi-stakeholder conflicts are managed through inclusive and deliberative, yet constrained collaborative processes. In water management, this research analyses the River Chief System in Xiamen to understand how top-down, mandated collaboration among governments, as well as between governments and citizens, attempts to tackle systemic, transboundary environmental issues. This thesis highlights a problem-driven institutional design of collaborative approaches, which are tailored to address specific problems in different governance domains. It reflects a fundamental political pragmatism that collaborative approaches are designed and used strategically to enhance governance capacity and social stability without relinquishing ultimate state control.